Do The Change: Challenging and Reimagining OEHS
This podcast focuses on highlighting upcoming leaders in their fields and how they got to where they are today with a special focus on the field of Occupational Health and Environmental Health Sciences & Health Equity. So we are going to be talking about all the hills and valleys of their journeys and get some insight into non-traditional paths into the field. Sponsored by the Northern California Education and Research Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of California Berkeley, San Francisco, and Davis.
Do The Change: Challenging and Reimagining OEHS
Do the Change: Reimagining OEHS with Sangeeta Agarawal (Part 2)
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Join us for Part 2 of our conversation with Sangeeta "San" Agarawal, RN, MS, CAS. With many years of professional experience across the tech and healthcare sectors, San has an incredible amount of career development advice to give. From the best ways to use networking to break into a new industry, to effective self-care techniques to stay motivated through tough times, join San as she discusses the twists and turns in her career.
See full transcript here: https://www.coeh.berkeley.edu/do-change-sangeeta-agarawal
Hi everyone welcome back to part two of our conversation with our amazing speaker on the Do the Change podcast. We're going to jump right back into the conversation, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube and follow us on Spotify and Instagram @dothechangepodcast. Okay, in that case let me see, maybe we can pivot a little bit and let me ask you like I guess like in terms of advice for new professionals new people, people who are new to the field of Occupational Health do you let me see do you have any like advice that you wish someone had given you when you had first, when you are currently joining this field or when you first started off your professional career?
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Do you mean as a nurse or in occupational health because I'm starting out in occupational-
JOANNE TEH:Well yeah, in terms of starting out in Occupational Health is there any like or is there anything you're currently struggling with that you would like to tell people about or if you have any advice for your previous fields or you just starting out as a professional starting out your professional career?
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Okay so maybe let's take those up as two separate questions so first of all I think the field of Occupational Health and nursing could use marketing because it's such an incredible field, we you know a lot of people that we see unless we are seeing you know people who are retired and that's awesome you know unless you're working with that geratology population, most of people today are working, so the whole occupational field some is something that is such a core part of you know of of the day-to-day life of people that we care for and it has such a huge influence on their health both in terms of how it affects them and then how they can influene their environment to be able to live healthy or address the challenges and even for people who are retired, I mean many people have injuries or you know conditions that they may be struggling for that could have resulted from you know their, the kind of issues that they faced at work whether that was bad posture or you know toxins or whatever. So I would say first of all I wish more people knew about this field because it is such a cool field and I feel like I can apply that knowledge no matter what field you go in whether you go into primary care you go into speciality care you go into urgent care as a nurse, as a nurse practitioner this field is so very applicable so I hope that more people are able to know about it and you know do continuing ed classes or do some form of learning in this field to know about it and be able to apply it like things like ergonomics and biomechanics, we can use that to help people. So that's the first thing I would say is I haven't seen that before and I would like to support in marketing about it and another point from a marketing perspective is at UCSF there, I was very fortunate I got NIOSH scholarship, a NIOSH trainee scholarship so part of my tuition was covered by that so not only did I get all this additional training and learning it also paid for part of my tuition I got, so I got the double the benefit about it. So I would say that's one thing secondly, this area of Occupational Health like when I went into it I didn't realize that it's such a beautiful community and there are all these additional classes and people and all of that so that took me a while to understand the difference between the reg- the main adult gerentology program that I'm part of in that umbrella and then the Occupational Health piece, so if somebody is working or you know has a lot of other commitments it can feel overwhelming to have all these extra like classes, grant rounds, events, research things and all the stuff that is part of you know part of this package. So if you're going into the field or you know going into this program understand the expectations and the course load so that you can plan your life accordingly and then I would say really take advantage of all the opportunities that you can because like once I kind of settled into it I feel like I was meeting people who literally wrote the textbooks, you know they wrote the textbooks on toxicology they identified the very first issues and fought for advocating for those rights or you know fought for those restrictions, you know like people who are really eminent in the field who are being the groundbreaking people in the field who are really made changes in the field. So really embrace being part of this community and feeling that yes I can learn and these are my, you know this is my community, it took me a while to get into that and to not have a impostor syndrome because I was like what am I doing here with all these people, but at some point I said you know this this is something I'm passionate about and I don't need to have made all the amazing accomplishments that they have, it's fine because I'm a student and my job right now is to learn from them and then figure out what I'll do in the future so really embracing that community and those relationships I think can go a very long way.
JOANNE TEH:That's really good advice, yeah taking advantage of the community that you're currently in whether or not you personally feel like you are a part of it yet, which you are.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Yeah, yeah, so yeah exactly, exactly. So I would say for occupational health I would say that for nursing, I've been a nurse for 12 years now and thinking of advice, I think one advice that I have learned to give myself now because as I'm looking at career opportunities and where I want to go next is earlier I used to look at where I'm going to go next based on a checklist of I hope it has these objective things, what I've learned about myself in the last few decades of working is that if I have a supportive environment and the cultural fit I really thrive. And if the culture or the job is not set up for success then you know even if you survive it's a very stressful environment so I would say that you know as much as I believe in not giving up I also believe in choosing yourself, choosing the quality of your own life, what you want and then finding the right places, the right people, the right community to work in so that you feel good about being there and working there. So I think that would be one of my biggest takeaways and secondly if you want to accomplish something or you feel like one day I want to do ABC, get started now you know reach out to people who are doing that work and say let me learn with you or let me try it and watch over what I'm doing because you can get there sooner than you think and I was very fortunate even when I was you know, when I became a cancer nurse I had all these ideas about Integrative Medicine applying, you know evidence-based Integrative Medicine in cancer and while I was in nursing school I reached out to people and I ended up being being on this research project where I ended up you know working on the actual manual for writing it and I ended up you know being part of the oncology nursing society community in integrative medicine and then becoming a chair for the integrative medicine community. So like a lot of things like that it's just, you know just show up and start working on your dreams now and as you work on it you will find the path forward.
JOANNE TEH:Wow that's really good advice you mentioned the thing about you previously saw your check- your like future goals as like a objective checklist of things that you wanted and I realized that's currently me and I have some self-reflection to do.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Yeah, and it evolves right? As you work on your goals you're like yeah, maybe I need to change this one. So, but then you know and you can change it anytime you want but you're working on what you want to be working on consciously.
JOANNE TEH:Wow.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:And feeling joy in what you're doing because you're like I'm not in this situation because somebody forced me to be in this situation. I'm here because I want to be here, you know there's a difference between saying oh my god I have to go to school and you know have
classes from like 8 in the morning till 5:00 and I have to come back and work on my homework till
10:00 at night or there's a difference in saying you know, I actually want to learn this topic and I want to be a clinician in this area and I'm learning with these super smart people you know with a content that is so well designed, one of the best in the world and I get to be in that environment where I get to learn from these people in a very structured way and have the day to be able to do that. And that completely changes the way you look at the day, you approach the day and how you absorb you know the knowledge and how you feel internally about yourself, you know?
JOANNE TEH:Wow. Wow.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:That's just what works for me, you know I'm just sharing with you what works for me.
JOANNE TEH:Uhuh. Dang I will be up tonight in bed thinking about this. Okay, in that case well, okay there's one thing I want to talk about for sure before we pivot a bit.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Yeah.
JOANNE TEH:That we mentioned earlier before we started this recording which was your work in space nursing, like I really want to know about that, that sounds awesome.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Yeah, so that kind of comes for me in the area of future of work and future of healthcare, so when I think about how you know from an evolution perspective work is evolving too. You know, the kind of work that we were that people were doing 50 years ago is very different than the work we are doing now and the kind of work that people will be doing 50 years from now or even 10 years from now might be quite different, you know? So as we look at helping people have quality of life both at home and at work it's important to think about how the actual job is evolving you know what are the kind of jobs that people are doing for example like earlier there was you know not earlier but still there is a lot of like unions and regulations and laws but so much of the workforce is going towards gig economy, gig economy has been growing exponentially right so what happens to people who are in that space from their healthcare perspective? What happens from, what happens to people who are working in innovate you know at Innovative Technologies, you know whether that is they're working in robotics or they're working you know Uber drivers right, or Airbnb or instacart or whatever right like delivering groceries, it's a whole new set of Health Care, Occupational Health assessment to consider and applying that to the field of you know space Health you know in few decades from now we will be looking at you know having interplanetary human communities so that means there will be people who are working you know on other planets or you know on moon and all of this is becoming real, right, the technology, the AI, all of this is becoming very very real in the last few years right? So my goal is to be able to understand how things are changing in healthcare both in terms of how all this innovation impact humans and what can be done to assess and understand and support that and secondly how we can use technology in a healthy way in a way that it helps humanity and how do we you know look at the checks and bounds that are, that technology or technology related organizations need to have so that things can move in a direction that supports Humanity. So that's kind of like the the broader overarching viewpoint that I look at. From a space health perspective it's something that I've always been passionate about like the whole space world and it was a hobby or you know it was just something internally in me like I kind of have these dreams or visions if you will of you know what the future of humanity can be and up to a certain point I thought this is all like you know it's sci-fi, and I watched like almost all Sci-Fi movies but then I actually started to see how there is an intersection between something like space travel and serious health illnesses. Remember like we talked about earlier cancer and other serious health illnesses, so serious health illnesses is a person got diagnosed with that problem and now they have the serious health illness. With space health, the environment creates such a big change in your health that you end up with a serious health illness or with the environment that has that, so you need a similar kind of complex Care Management to address this whole multifaceted whole health approach to addressing that human being, you know? And that's where I think there's such an interesting intersection of Healthcare and technology and space health so that's something that I started to realize it's it's actually kind of real and then and I started to go to events in that area I started to meet people I started to like read books and write to the authors about it and kind of like make like little presentations and handouts and stuff and I met a lot of very interesting people. In fact like I met astronauts I met with the, with astronauts who've gone to the ISS space station, I got to hold a rock that is from Mars.
JOANNE TEH:That's so cool.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Yeah and I got to meet with one of the chief medical officers who was at SpaceX and now at Nasa and I told them about all my crazy like ideas and they were like no this is great it's very real we need people who have this multidisiplinary background, because we don't have a lot of people who have that kind of background so I started to do educational lectures and educate other people about it, you know kind of drink the Kool-Aid on this topic and so being like at conferences and presented on it and doing like informal research in that area and I got- and UC actually has a UC space Health Community so I became a UC space Health fellow because I was like doing all these things and they're like yeah you're working on it. So they made me a UC space Health fellow, then I've been doing like topics that are related to this area and I'm talking to TRISH which is the research arm of NASA and what else am I doing? Oh and then the space nursing society, they were like you are like so involved and so energetic on this topic do you want to like continue it and lead it and like okay so they handed it over to me. So I'm just, it's like a snowball you know that's gained momentum and I just hope I can continue to make a difference as the field evolves and as more people get into it. I think right now there's more focus for like high school and school and you know that generation because they might be the generation that's actually you know traveling to other planets or to moon or Mars. So I do events, educational events for them and fun events for them, yeah.
JOANNE TEH:Mhm, wow this is really cool. Okay two things, one: I think at first like when I saw space nursing on your list of things that you like we could talk about I was like that's seemingly random but interesting but after you explain it as like a possible evolution of the field of Occupational Sciences, Occupational Health Sciences like that's like it's awesome I never thought about like how the field can evolve so like quickly that these almost fictional things can become a reality. Yeah that's a really interesting consideration about the field, and then second I think it's really awesome how you were able to take like some personal interest and then like snowball it to this level like wow. Like I'm personally a fan of science like science fiction but I would have never expected to be like ever in my life make it any part of my professional development but you said that you just like started attending events and like reading books, reaching out to authors, like that's how you entered the field?
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Yeah, yeah and then I just started to like develop my own like documents and then I start- and people wanted me to talk about it so I went to talk to people and train them on what I knew so you know you just, you learn and then you contribute forward to people that want to learn from you and that's just how I feel like we can, we can grow and we can help other people to grow in the field.
JOANNE TEH:That's awesome I would have never thought to like just start attending like not knowing anything about the field prior I never thought to just attend or just like reach out to people, that's so incredible.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Online is a very powerful place and communities are very very powerful you just you never know. I mean honestly like it this is so random, so bizarre like I literally emailed the like you know people who are at the top level in the field of space Health called, messaged on LinkedIn. I was like this is what I'm doing, this is what I figured out so far, and you know this is what I've done ABC and now I'm doing XYZ. I have question about this thing or what do you think like is it too off, like how far are we in the field, is there anything real going on, you know? And I was totally surprised you know that they actually responded to me here you know in the field, yeah so like Dr. Dorit Donoviel, she is the director of TRISH she's at I think Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. I messaged her and she was like so supportive and messaged me back and she was like yeah go for it and then I asked her questions about like topics even for my projects that would help me to go deeper into the field and I gave her some ideas and she was like yeah work on this particular thing, so I did that. And then actually in your podcast you had Dr. Josh Potocko I might be butchering his name. He's worked in the field of occupational medicine and Aeronautics. So I told my toxicology Professor about my interest in this topic and Dr Tamir and Dr Dennis Schusterman, they connected me to Josh and they're like yeah he can tell you like what you study and you know like what kind of projects you can do for your class that would be related to this topic so you can continue to you know do your class projects on topics that are related to your sci-fi interest. And I literally did that, I did research on, I did presentations and papers on beryllium because beryllium is an important part of part of Aeronautics.
JOANNE TEH:Oh my gosh that's so awesome. Wow, I have a lot to think about. I feel like usually people my age especially we'll kind of like shy away from doing that because it feels like we don't have like the balls to do that I guess you could say like it feels like we haven't really made any real contributions yet so like how could I dare to like reach out to this high ranking professional and like propose my little ideas, but like it works out.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:I think the secret, the secret ammunition that we all have is the fact that we are a student. You're not reaching out just as anybody you're reaching out as a student and you're associated with the academic Institute that is known to be you know a leader in that area so that carries some weight, and reaching out from that perspective and saying hey I want to learn in a way it's a compliment because saying you know I think you are amazing and you are a leader in your area and that's why I'm reaching out to you and you can get some guidance. I think what's important is to keep the ask really really small so people are really busy, they are juggling a lot of things, so if the ask is something really small that they can you know respond to your message in two minutes and you would have got what you need, that's awesome now they've helped you, you got what you needed and it didn't end up being you know something that took up a lot of their time. So I think keeping that in mind and secondly not taking it personally if somebody didn't respond just know you know they have a lot on their plate and that's fine, yeah. And just pay forward when you can in terms of supporting people and find communities that you can be part of where you do end up meeting people and you end up meeting people who will introduce you to other people you know who are passionate about your topic like, so UC is great with that and then like for Occupational Health there are a lot of great communities like for the nurses there is the El Camino Occupational Health Community that's in Silicon Valley that's really great and then there is OHP that's the occupational health professionals something that's a really great Community, UCSF, UC Berkeley is a great Community, the OEM conference is a great Community, there's the industrial hygiene meetings the AIHM I think they call themselves or something like that or AIHA, that's a great community so you just meet people through these different professional organizations and communities.
JOANNE TEH:Wow this is awesome, okay.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Find people.
JOANNE TEH:Yeah, this is a lesson to really take advantage of your network, okay, well in that case do you have any other things that you wanted to talk about that we haven't gotten to yet or anything you forgot to say earlier?
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:I mean I guess my question to you would be what do you think would help people who are listening, is there anything that we haven't covered that might benefit people?
JOANNE TEH:Well usually I ask questions like how would you help people like how would you recommend people to start networking or how would they start making their like professional or just like the professional development questions but I think you happen to answer a lot of the ones I had stored up as you were talking just naturally so I think it I think it'll be very helpful whether or not we have those specific questions.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Okay.
JOANNE TEH:Yeah.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Trying to think what else can help people. Yeah I think one thing I would say is failure is very real and it is a big part of life especially if you're going to go for aspirational goals and challenges and I would say I've faced failure couple of times in my life but one of the darkest times for me was when I had to wrap up my company because that was a huge what felt like a huge professional failure for me and what I wanted to do in terms of serving people, you know? I was actually making a difference, people needed what I was building and I had worked on it for years, people had worked with me on it for years, I feel like I, you know with any startup there is always a risk that things would fail there's 95%, 99% chance it would fail but I just somehow thought that I would make it work. So I feel like I was letting so many people down, you know people who needed help like you know people are going through cancer and if I could have helped them and I couldn't anymore if I couldn't keep the company going so I feel like I was letting all those people down and you know and people who have been my mentors and advocates and who had passed on in fact so I just felt this huge lot of darkness and then people who worked on this with me, there were hundreds of people who worked on building this company and building this organization and supporting me through this and I just feel like I let all those people down so it was really heartbreaking to not be able to do what I could to empower you know people who were working with me and give them all the amazing opportunities or to be able to help people in the community which is what I set out to do or to be able to inspire you know nurses and other healthcare professionals because I got to a certain point and then it was like you know kind of falling off a cliff. But at the same time it was pretty clear there wasn't a viable way to carry things forward with the way the contracts and things were, the operating cost of those contracts was in tens of thousands of dollars but the revenue for that wasn't coming in for what was committed from you know from those opportunities so it was a loss. So I did end up you know kind of kicking and screaming I did end up realizing I need to wrap it up and I did that but I went through this really I went through this really period of questioning myself and feeling like a complete failure and feeling like I can't show my face even in the community because who am I if I'm not this? Where do I, you know everything that I had led up to my life was still the point of doing this and now if this didn't work work then now what? You know? Do I not care about my goal anymore, do I not believe in myself, is it even worth living, you know? I genuinely was questioning that because I feel like failure can be very real heartbreak and setbacks can be very very real and I feel like I was very fortunate that even in those times I kind of had lost even connection with my spiritual practices but I, but they still held me to just hold the space even while I was going through the darkness to say just be here you know, I don't know what it means but just be here and a path will come forward. So I did days and weeks and months of just like wandering and doing nothing sort of but like meditations and silence meditations and silence courses to just say okay I'm nothing, I want nothing, I do nothing and it's okay to be nothing, I can still I have the right or I'm blessed to still be on this planet, yeah. And coming from that place of nothing and realizing that actually out of that nothingness is everything because as I embrace the fact that I'm nothing I started to say okay what can I do to give myself joy today? And I would just do little things to take care of myself because before that for six years I had not taken a break at all I had not you know like thought about myself and I started to do little things to take care of myself and then I started to ask people what do I do? And as I reached out to people I thought they won't respond to me or they would hate me or they would say how could you let this fail or whatever but people were super nice and they were like yeah I don't know how you were even making it until now it was impossible but there are so many ways forward you know and different people shared with me their journey and their hardships and their struggles which I had not thought about before even though I knew entrepreneurship is hard or whatever, you know whoever is listening you're doing in your life there are people who have been through failures you know who've been through hardships so if you're going through that it's good to talk to them because then you see somebody else went through that, you're not alone, and you don't judge yourself as much and there is hope and a path forward. So that helped to me because when I talk to other entrepreneurs I felt like they found a life after entrepreneurship, you know? and I talked to you know people who I had worked with or you know had different relationships and they showed me there is so many different opportunities and paths forward and different ways that I could continue and make a difference and I started to do that and I started to ask for help instead of being somebody who was the leader or who was the one who was helping people, I started to say I need help and that's how I ended up at UC because I said okay I'm passionate about all these areas and I need help. I want to find a community and I want to find a path forward and I feel like this might be it, but I don't know and actually Dr Lee who's in you know who's one of the key professors in the health program she talked to me and she said yeah, you know, you would be a great fit. And you know we worked through a plan for it and other people you know, people at NCI, people in so many different areas help me to figure out okay there is a path forward so if you feel like one road closed or something was a major setback just know even if you can't see the path forward even if it's all black, even if it's all cloudy just have faith that you will find your way you will find a path forward and go and ask for help and connect with yourself in you know, with the depth of your soul and figure out what you have built so far in your life, what are the things you've done what have you accomplished so far in your life, because they will help you to realize how much you're capable of, how much you've already accomplished and what you could do and you reach out to people in the world and the world will help you just as much as you want to help people and make a difference and it becomes a more symbiotic relationship. And that's what I love about my life today is I don't feel like I need to be somebody or you know I need to know all the answers I can just be who I am and say this is what I know today this is how I can help this is what I don't know and I need help and you know put a beacon out there and see if somebody helps me.
JOANNE TEH:Well those are actually, that's really incredible advice. I feel like this is a really hard lesson to learn especially like if you're if you haven't experienced a setback yet then like this is the type of information that you need to have under your belt so you can remind yourself when it's happening.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Yeah and it makes you a much more, all that experience even the hardships even the failure adds a dimension to who you are and to what you bring, you know whether it's to the community or to the work or your passion and that adds this richness and this diversity you know and like a fertilizer in the soil. So that makes makes what you do next so much richer like what I'm doing now in occ health and technology and different things is just so much richer because of my past experiences you know with what I've done.
JOANNE TEH:I really like that metaphor like fertilizer in the soil it's like the piece of manure that grows like a beautiful flower.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Yeah, yeah. It might feel like crap but then you know it actually ends up being the fertilizer.
JOANNE TEH:Yeah that's a good message well wow you have really dropped a lot of like advice bombs, knowledge bombs on me right now.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Thank you, I think everybody is amazing you know I really appreciate everyone who's, who took the time to listen and I hope, I know you've done amazing things in your life and you're going to do amazing things in your life and I hope that you found this time helpful and something that adds to your toolbox and I'm excited for you wherever you are and I hope you connect with me on social media and I can follow you as you follow me on my journey.
JOANNE TEH:Thank you actually for spending your time with us today.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Thank you so much Joanne, you're amazing with all the questions you asked and the way you facilitated this whole episode and I'm excited for you, for your career and what yuo will be doing.
JOANNE TEH:Thank you so much, thank you, thank you. I will definitely be following you on LinkedIn.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Thank you.
JOANNE TEH:Yeah, okay well that was an incredible conversation I'm glad you were able to join us today.
SANGEETA AGARAWAL:Thank you.
JOANNE TEH:Think that marks the end of our episode.